It has already happened – Target is able to identify 25 products that can accurately ascertain if you are pregnant or not – and send you coupons before you even need them.

When you get a membership card from Target, they are not offering you discounts for free – they seek to link your real world purchases (credit cards used) with your online impulse buys. Some even sell or ‘exchange’ your anonymized information with so-called data brokers. However, research has shown that such anonymized info can pretty much identify a specific person with great accuracy.

One day, such tracking will be so pervasive and invasive that we will wonder if there was ever a notion of privacy.

Let’s consider though that MLH is a young organization that is exploring the hackathon space in a novel way. With 100s of hackathons under their belt they made a rushed call. We as students of logic can understand that it was nothing personal or malignant, right? This was a professional failure. Some of you have pointed out the fact that most big hackathons do not need the support that MLH provides and existed just fine prior to MLH entering the scene.

MLH isn’t the hackathoner’s Mondo Burger run by greaseballs counting their money and giggling, just by 3 dudes counting their money and giggling. MLH hides behind a vision to solve problems and bring joy by fusing the creative and analytical powers of the human mind, instead of addressing actual community issues. MLH was brought about by hackers just like you and me who saw what we could do when we work together and who understood the efficiency that structure provides, yet do not collaborate with the community. Let’s not spit in the mirror but let’s also not wash over the shortcomings and ignore them and MLH’s insistence on not communicating about them. As people who have accepted a lifelong dedication to solving problems, let’s stay focused and think of ways we can get MLH to prevent future confusion and further build this community that we’ve all invested in.

Of course, before we do anything, let’s take a bit of time to cool off. Oh wait, MLH has had a day. Nevermind. I implore anyone who wrote reviews to reconsider taking further action as MLH still will not address these issues. We, with a MLH who has proven they cannot take criticism from the community, must consider other ways to be a lifeline for those people and bestow them with the power to sculpt and strum technology. This mishap won’t break us. Let’s stay true to the course; I believe MLH can fix this if they will communicate with the community they claim they “serve”.

MLH is a for-profit company. They make profits selling the hackers that attend their sponsored events as a product to the sponsors.

If you attend these hackathons, MLH is profiting off of you, and therefore you ARE entitled to a reasonable experience at the very least. If even one of us are made forfeit what is due us, then we all lose out.

Not to mention that they’re profiting off of the college organizers, and by superseding their authority on their own venue, they are being incredibly disrespectful at the very least. We all lose yet again.

Papa said, “Johnny, come here. Open your mouth and stick out your tongue.” Johnny did so, and lo and behold, there was the fresh reddish stain on his tongue.

Papa retorted, “See? All the evidence. That red stain is obviously from the strawberry sweet. No other sweet gives off a stain like that. You took my sweet didn’t you?”

Little Johnny denied, “No, papa. The sweet that stained my tongue was actually a gift from a very kind alien who visited my room in a UFO last night. Don’t believe, ask my favourite bolster. He met the alien too and even spoke to it. In fact, you can ask all the toys in my room — my toy soldier, my toy train, my toy rabbit — they will tell you the same thing. The sweet was a reward to me for being such a good boy, obeying my parents, and not telling lies!”

Papa said, “Little Johnny, stop lying. You are making up one lie after another and trying to cover up with bigger and bigger lies. Why don’t you just admit that you stole my sweet and say you are sorry?”

Little Johnny said, “Papa, stop nagging. If not, I will disown you as my daddy and replace you with the neighbour Tim’s daddy”.

Papa was aghast. “You are saying you don’t want to have anything more to do with me? I’m going to call mama and all your brothers and sisters and the neighbours here as witnesses so that she can also hear what you said.”

Little Johnny replied, “You are all not allowed to come together like that. I will call out the big bad wolf from the Red Riding Hood storybook on the bookshelf to come alive to eat you all up. In fact, you should be thankful because you can’t find your sweet. Your teeth are all rotting, you have diabetes…. sweets are bad for an old man like you. You should be grateful to whoever it was who took your sweet. And it wasn’t me, OK?”

1. OPTIMISM – It all starts with a hunch or a positive outlook leading us to buy or sell.

2. EXCITEMENT – Things start moving our way and we get excited. We start to anticipate and hope that a possible success story is in the making.
.3. THRILL – The market continues to be favorable and we just can’t help but start to feel a little “Smart.”
At this point we have complete confidence in trading system.

4. EUPHORIA – This marks the point of maximum financial risk but also maximum financial gain. Our investments turn into quick and easy profits, so we begin to ignore the basic concept of risk and now start trading anything that we can get our hands on to make a quick buck.

5. ANXIETY – Oh no – it’s turning around! The markets start to show their first signs of taking your “hard earned” profits back. But having never seen this happen, we still remain ultra greedy and think the long-term trend is higher.

6. DENIAL – The markets don’t turn as quickly as we had hoped. There must be something wrong we think to ourselves. Our “long-term” view now shortens to a near-term hope of an improvement.

7. FEAR – Reality sets in that we are not as smart as we once thought. Instead of being confident in our trading we become confused. At this point we should get out with a small profitand move on but we don’t for some stupid reason.

8. DESPERATION – All gains have been lost at this point. We had our chance to profit and missed it. Not knowing how to act, we attempt to do anything that will bring our positions back into the black.

9. PANIC – The most emotional period by far. We are clueless and helpless. At this stage we feel like we are at the mercy of the market and have absolutely no control.

10. CAPITULATION – We have reached our breaking point and sell our positions at any price. So long as we can get out of the market to avoid bigger losses we are content.

11. DESPONDENCY – After exiting the markets we do not want to trade ever again. The markets are not for us and should be avoided like the plague. However, this rare point marks the point of maximum financial opportunity.

12. DEPRESSION – We drink, cry and/or pray. How could we have been so dumb we think to ourselves. Some start to correctly look back and analyze what went wrong. Real traders are born here, learning from past mistakes.

13. HOPE – We can still do this! Eventually we return come to the realization the market actually does have cycles. We begin to start analyzing new opportunities.

14. RELIEF – The markets are turning positive again and we see our prior investment come back around. We regain our faith (although small) in our ability to invest our money.

After months of delays and procrastination, I finally got my Robinhood account approved and running. It was never my priority since I used SCB’s Online Trading platform which has pretty much negligible fees.

I started with $1000 and after a few minutes of using the app, I have to say I like the superior execution (because of their automatic 5%-better-than-market order fill) However, the charting features seem leave much to be desired. The huge equity number makes the app seem like a gambling app than a serious trading platform.

Exploring the API to see if I can make a bridge between Interactive Brokers and Robinhood, one for charting and the latter for execution.